Sibling comment linked to Wikipedia English article, which describes the overall thing, but I think it lacks a bit on the "being the opposite of shock therapy".
The thing about Plano Real is really about its previous context. In the preceding 10 years, government tried fighting hyperinflation by introducing measures that, by their nature, could not be revealed to society beforehand. They did things like freeze prices of goods, blanket freezes of bank deposits and savings, etc. None of that worked, either because implementing price freezes was impractical and easily circumvented, or because freezing deposits hurt people's ability to invest, etc.
For Plano real, everything was laid out by the team proposing it far in advance, everything was clearly communicated by the government, all dates of transitions and rules were known in advance by all actors of the economy.
Really, the only unknown variable was the final conversion rate, but everyone knew it was going to kind of resemble the dollar ratio. In fact, I remember it crisp in my mind (I was a child), the final rate was CR$ 2750 = 1 R$.
And it worked.
Oh, and we also won the world cup that year, whiiiich in my mind, helped.
The thing about Plano Real is really about its previous context. In the preceding 10 years, government tried fighting hyperinflation by introducing measures that, by their nature, could not be revealed to society beforehand. They did things like freeze prices of goods, blanket freezes of bank deposits and savings, etc. None of that worked, either because implementing price freezes was impractical and easily circumvented, or because freezing deposits hurt people's ability to invest, etc.
For Plano real, everything was laid out by the team proposing it far in advance, everything was clearly communicated by the government, all dates of transitions and rules were known in advance by all actors of the economy.
Really, the only unknown variable was the final conversion rate, but everyone knew it was going to kind of resemble the dollar ratio. In fact, I remember it crisp in my mind (I was a child), the final rate was CR$ 2750 = 1 R$.
And it worked.
Oh, and we also won the world cup that year, whiiiich in my mind, helped.